by Karen Brune Mathis
Managing Editor
Pulitzer Prize-winning author, former Newsweek editor and public-affairs show co-anchor Jon Meacham said Tuesday he planned to take action regarding questions of President Barack Obama’s birthplace.
Instead of questioning where a president or presidential candidate was born, Meacham intends to call for the question to be thrown out.
“I am going to call for repealing that part of the Constitution,” Meacham told about 140 people attending a World Affairs Council event at The River Club Downtown. “I’m sure it will catch fire,” he said drily.
Meacham referenced the latest questioning of Obama’s place of birth by billionaire real estate developer Donald Trump, who seeks the GOP nomination for the presidency.
“Instead of encouraging the sideshow,” said Meacham, “let’s amend the Constitution and get rid of that clause.”
The U.S. Constitution states that: “No person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty-five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.”
Meacham explained the “natural born” clause was intended to keep a relative of a foreign leader from coming to the new United States and “buy the presidency. “
Meacham doubts that fear continues to be a concern, although he supposes that if Prince William ran for the presidency, he might win.
Meacham spoke to a lunch event co-hosted by the World Affairs Council of Jacksonville and The Gate Governors Club. His presentation was “The Politics of Economics.”
Last night, he spoke at a World Affairs Council Global Issues Evening event at the University of North Florida. The topic was “Is Greatness Slipping Away?”
Meacham’s 2008 book, “American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House,” was awarded the Pulitzer Prize. “Any president who tries to attack his own assassin is worth a book,” he said.
Meacham, a Chattanooga native, joined Newsweek in 1995 and served as national affairs editor, managing editor and editor, leaving after it was recently sold.
He is now an executive with Random House and has been co-host of “Need to Know” on PBS.
His website says he is working on biographies of Thomas Jefferson and of George H.W. Bush for Random House.
He also authored “American Gospel: God, the Founding Fathers, and the Making of a Nation” and “Franklin and Winston: An Intimate Portrait of an Epic Friendship.”
He’s a graduate of The University of the South in Sewanee, Tenn., where he was a fraternity brother of Jacksonville business leader John Falconetti, president of The Drummond Press.
Meacham talked about “the political media culture” sustained by technology and the need for political drama.
“Opposition is inherently more dramatic,” he said. “There’s good money and there’s good ratings in it.”
Also, those who produce and consume the culture might be a relatively small number of people, but they have “disproportionate influence.”
Meacham said Obama, elected in November 2008 and sworn in Jan. 20, 2009, has about four to five months “to pick an issue” of long- range change before the re-
election campaign sets in. ”The president has found his footing,” he said.
Meacham predicts the economy will move forward and the national unemployment rate will drop below 8 percent in time for the November 2012 election.
“The wind is at the president’s back,” said Meacham, “depending on external events.”
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